Dawn of Adventure {Book One of The Paths We've Traveled}

Chapter Twenty: A Glimpse of Hope

After so long spent sleeping in the room given to her at Grimstone, Lucy didn't think she could ever be truly warm again. And yet now sweat trickled down her neck, and she discreetly hiked her skirts up around her knees, still not cool enough. Why Evia had demanded that Wendy's room be kept so hot, she had no idea. Lucy appreciated it at first, but now it was as if Hell itself came to Earthland. And the situation was only made worse due to the layers and layers of fabric encompassing her body. As soon as they finished this quest, she was putting on her tank top and skimpiest shorts and just reveling in the feeling of air on her skin and showing what she got. Screw this backwards country with its fear of hot women.

The roaring hearth cast the room in dancing shadows, light leaping up and down across Wendy's drawn face. Blue strands of hair tangled together to create a knotted mess, further emphasizing the terrible state the Sky Maiden slipped into more and more each passing day. Hours went by between each moment of clarity and consciousness, and Lucy feared that within the next few days, Wendy simply just wouldn't wake up anymore.

Heat pricked the corners of the celestial spirit wizard's eyes, tears spilling over the longer she looked at her dear and miserable friend. She hadn't seen anyone this sick since her mother, and... it hadn't turned out well for Layla. And since then, her friends didn't really get so deadly ill. There were only a couple times that she could remember where she had been terrified for the lives of her guildmates: when the Thunder Legion had been exposed to those bane particles, when Natsu almost died like three times during the war, and now, Lucy couldn't breathe without thoughts of Wendy's pain and anguish spiking through her and pinning her to the chair.

From across the room at Wendy's other bedside, Evia glanced up when a quiet sniffle cut through the crackle of the fire. She caught sight of the silver tracks staining the maid's face, but the soft smile Evia usually used was too far out of reach. Worry for the young girl consumed her, fear that the same fate that had befallen her darling Dorothea was only around the corner from Mistress Shelia. Evia had run out of options, and they were running out of time.

Wendy moaned, head thrashing on the pillow. The sheets ended up at her waist, revealing a sweat stained nightgown clinging to her clammy skin. Lucy reached out with trembling hands, tucking the gray sheet under the girl's chin.

Evia cleared her throat, recognizing that Lucy needed something to get her mind off of the terrible situation at hand. "My grandmother told me a story, years and years ago." Lucy blinked, fingers curling around her pendant. Even in the sweltering room, the crystal absorbed as much heat as it could, several degrees hotter against her palm than the rest of her skin. Loki's key warmed as well, and she let it be a desperate hope that magic was here and everything was okay. The lie didn't last long.

The healer noticed the sweat dripping from Lucy's brow, but she also took note of the shivering girl now lying still on the bed. So while she knew the maid was likely very uncomfortable, she wouldn't do anything to lower the temperature in the room. Instead, Evia shifted in her chair, throwing her mind back to the tale her grandmother spun decades ago.

"Both my mother and my grandmother were healers, which is what led me to pursue this path. Grandma... she had the most fascinating stories. She lived back when our country had... well, you likely won't believe me, but she was determined that during her time, there was magic in Benos. I don't know why she was so stubborn about it, but no matter what Mama or anyone else said, she never changed her mind. I've never known if I truly believed her, but it did make for fascinating stories for her to tell me and my brother around the hearth at night." Lucy stared at the elderly woman with a faint smile, reminded of what Bauer had told them so many months ago. Funny, how only a hundred years is all it takes to forget about such a huge part of our culture.